CHAPTER XVII
CURES BY FASTING
THE cases dealt with in the following chapter are typical but not exhaustive. They are selected from a large number solely because of their representative character, and as evidence that the fast reaches indiscriminately but in like manner all phases of the functional bodily ills, and all organic disease that is not beyond repair. In the first instance the patient was afflicted with the disease symptom known as inflammatory rheumatism. When first seen, the boy, for he was but seventeen years of age, was in a precarious condition. The case had been given up by the medical adviser as hopeless, and a limit of twenty-four hours had been set within which death must occur. In the opinion of the physician the only thing that could be done was to alleviate the excruciating pain with opiates, thus permitting dissolution to take place while the youth was unconscious from their influence. The dis-
